Six Anime That Shaped Me to Who I Am Now (Part 1)
What has anime done to you?
Of course, it makes you happy, excited, and cry. However, some people also get influence by it. I’m one of those people. Anime has changed or influenced how I think about certain topics.
Here, I’m going to talk about anime which shaped me to who I am now (directly or indirectly). For the order, I don’t organize them by how strong or how important the influence is. I put them according to the time I watched them or got influenced by them.
For those who may already watched those anime, I divide each anime into synopsis and how it impacted on me, so you don’t have to read about things you’ve already known. Also, there are 6 anime, but I, for some reason, have too much stuff to talk about, so I have to divide them into 2 part. Here is part 1.
1. Angel Beats!
Synopsis
“Angel Beats!” Is set in a high school in the afterlife. The people with trauma or hardship in their lives ended up lived in this world. They must overcome their trauma or achieve their unfulfilled goal before passing on and being reincarnated.
Yuzuru, a boy with amnesia, woke up only to see that he was in the afterlife. He met a girl named Yuri. She invited him to join the Afterlife Battlefront or SSS to fight against God for their unfair circumstances in life. The enemy was Angel, the student council president, who had supernatural power and was believed to be God’s associate.
The main protagonist joined the battlefront and met various people in the same force, learning about their past and hardship. As the story unfold, we also learn about the MC and Angel’s past and their true purposes.
A new otaku was born
Angel Beats! isn’t the first anime I ever watched, but it’s the anime which turned me into a true anime fan. By the synopsis above, you know that there’s full of encounter, separation, and painful experiences in life. I can’t remember the characters’ names, but the important characters have their own uniqueness, and because of them, I had a lot of fun and laugh out loud many times. However, because the encounter is fun, the separation, of course, is difficult to accept. That’s why when the big plot twist was reveal, it was really heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. When the ending credit rolled, I was left completely empty inside and I finally could say “I love anime!”. And thus, a new Cambodian otaku was born.
2. Citrus
Synopsis
Citrus is a yuri (girl love) anime, directed by Takeo Takahashi and animated by Studio Passione. It was adapted from the manga with the same name, illustrated by Saburouta. The story followed Yuzu, a self-proclaimed gyaru (ギャル), transferred to a new house and high school after her mother’s remarriage. In the high school, she often had problems with Mei, a hard-working but cold student council student. But it turned out that Mei was Yuzu’s stepfather’s daughter, so Mei became her stepsister. They had to shared bedroom together and she couldn’t stand it. But later, Yuzu realized that she developed romantic feeling for her sister.
Dive into a new world
As you can see, Citrus isn’t just a yuri anime, but it’s an incest yuri (that isn’t related by blood). At first, I wasn’t that interested in yuri “Who wants to watch two girl kissing anyway?” However, its synopsis caught my eyes. I wanted to know how the anime with controversial topic (I mean incest) ends. And it turned out to be… wholesome??? (the first kiss was absolutely not), but kind of problematic because of the obvious reason. As for Mei, she also had her own problem to solve. But they tried their best to be together. As for the plot, it isn’t that good either because of the repeated love triangle or some sorts. But for me, it was one of the best things to happen to me at the time of watching it. It’s the first yuri I ever watched and it pushed me to read its manga, making it my first yuri manga I ever read. It introduced me to many other great yuri anime/manga, some of which are my favorite of all time. When I first conceptualized this article, Citrus wasn’t the first one that came to my mind, but now I realized that it really had a big impact on me. Because of it, I entered the world of LGBTQ+ and learn a lot of new things about them. Without it, I wouldn’t be interested in this topics at all.
3. Sound! Euphonium (響け！ユーフォニアム)
Synopsis
Sound! Euphonium is drama anime adapted from a novel by the same name, written by Ayano Takeda, and is directed by Tatsuya Ishihara and Naoko Yamada. The studio behind this music anime is the legendary Kyoto Animation.
The story followed Kumiko, enrolled in a Kitauji High School while leaving her bitter past with her old bandmate Reina behind. However, she was still dragged into the school’s band club by her new friends. Under a strict adviser, their band had a big goal, competing with other school to get into national. Meanwhile, Kumiko also had another problem for herself as she re-encountered Reina and had to clear their past conflict.
The awakening of desire for a meaningful relationship
I started watching Sound! Euphonium for a weird reason. Usually, we watch an anime because of interesting synopsis, but for this one, I watched it because I wanted to see “Liz and the blue bird”, a spin-off movie of it. For Liz and the Blue Bird, I was interested in friendship between other two characters in the same band, but I chose to watch the anime first because I was afraid that I would miss something in the movie (it turned out to not having any relation with each other and you can watch the movie without knowing anything from the anime). So, when I started watching Sound! Euphonium, I tried to find the two characters from Liz and the Blue Bird, but gradually, I fell in love with Kumiko and Reina’s relationship (I mean friendship). They supported and inspired each other to be the best euphonium and trumpet player. It’s not a trope which has never been done in anime, but something about this anime opened my eyes “You know what? Friendship is amazing!” I woke up from desire to be forever alone to longing for closed/best friend or a meaningful relationship, not just a shallow one. I didn’t change all of sudden. I’m still me. But (very, very) slowly and surely, I value friendship and open up more to other people.
So yeah! Sound! Euphonium has a big influence in my life!
4. Liz and the Blue Bird (リズと青い鳥)
Synopsis
The movie follows Mizore, an introvert student and a oboist in the school’s band and her closest friend, Nozomi, one of the band’s flutists who is more outgoing and popular. They were tasked to play a duet from the musical piece Liz and the Blue Bird, based on a fairy tale. The story is about a woman named Liz (represented by the oboe in the musical piece) and a blue bird took form as a human (represented by the flute). They became best friend and lived together, but later Liz had to make a difficult decision - Being apart from her friend so that she could live freely as a bird.
The distance between Mizore and Nozomi grew as the concert approached. Mizore was afraid that Nozomi would abandon her again as Nozomi has (unintentionally) done once. She couldn’t understand why Liz decided to let her bird friend to be free because she couldn’t do so. This became a hindrance for their performance as she needed to convey the character’s emotion through her music.
From ears to heart
Liz and the Blue Bird makes me love music more than ever before. I have been always loving music, but before watching the movie, I just listened to music and know that it’s sad, happy, or beautiful in a shallow way. When I watched the movie, I saw the struggling of Mizore regarding expressing her platonic (or romantic? Still can’t figure it out) feeling toward Nozomi. As for Nozomi, she also had her own internal conflict regarding her future, as well as theirs. After seeing all of that, the final ensemble scene where Mizore played her oboe responding to Nozomi’s flute hit me like a truck. My tear fell down uncontrollably.
Later on, I went to watch an orchestra concert with my friends. I don’t know anything about the musician, the composers, and even the music itself. The music also has nothing to do with the anime I watched. Listening to it, I recalled the experience where I watched Liz and the Blue Bird and thought “Orchestra is amazing!” And just that - no emotional connection between the orchestra and the movie. However, there were some musical pieces which just “clicked”. All of sudden, I felt that the melody grasped my heart (the physical one) and squeezed it with full force until I broke out in tear. I was so surprised “What the hell is happening to me? I’m crying because of music that has nothing related to me whatsoever? I just know one thing - it’s such a beautiful melody.”
After thinking about it, I realized that the root is Liz and the Blue Bird. Something in me has changed - I immerse into music emotionally even without knowledge of the origin or meaning. It doesn’t mean I cry every time I hear a sad song or understand whatever feeling put into the music. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes it’s not only my ears, but also my heart that listens to music.
That’s all for part 1. The other two will be posted in part 2. There, you’ll see how Citrus indirectly impacted me to who I am now.
P.S. It’s very, very difficult to explain about my feelings, especially regarding music. I failed to describe why the ensemble scene in Liz and the Blue Bird is so great. If you can’t figure out what I’m trying to say, I’m so sorry. Also, I didn’t do the above anime justice of how special they are. What I wanted to say is “Please watch them. You’ll know what made them great.”
